by Lowe, Anna
Cries shot out, and they broke apart.
Sophie gripped Chase’s hand. “What’s going on?”
There was some commotion over at the blowhole. Sophie looked around in panic, searching for the dogs. They were still nearby, thank goodness, with Coco and Darcy rooting around in the scrub, and Boris chasing a leaf in the wind.
“Whoa,” Sophie murmured as she realized what had happened. A young man had ventured too close to the blowhole and been tumbled off his feet by the blast. Two friends rushed over to pull him to safety. The trio retreated a safe distance, where they broke into hoots of laughter.
Sophie shook her head. She’d nearly been killed that morning, and she still felt shaky inside. What did those men find funny about near-death?
“Fools,” Chase muttered.
There was a sign there and everything. Warning. Stay clear of blowhole. You can be sucked in and killed.
“Lucky fools,” she added. But really, she was a lucky fool too, considering what had happened that morning. So what exactly did that mean?
She thought it over for a moment, then scooted closer to Chase. When she’d moved to Maui, she’d promised herself to live life to the fullest. To feel beauty, to hope, and to enjoy. That was the moral of the story, right?
Right, she told herself firmly.
Her eyes locked with Chase’s, and a moment later, they were kissing again.
Chapter Five
Chase had endured a lot of highs and lows in his life, but he’d never experienced anything like the previous twenty-four hours. He stretched under the cool, crisp sheets and opened his eyes slowly, wondering if it had all been a dream. But it really was the next morning, and he really was at Sophie’s house — and in her bed. She was curled up in his arms and everything.
He moved his hand, smoothing the fabric of her sleeve. Yes, they were dressed, because it hadn’t been that kind of night. He was only there to keep Sophie safe.
Well, okay, to keep her safe and to calm his inner wolf, who’d gone crazy at the explosion. The acrid scent of the burning truck, the flashing lights, the wailing sirens — wolves weren’t good with things like that. A decade in the military had heightened his tolerance for that kind of sensory overload, but that was different. This was a threat to Sophie, and it had nearly made him snap.
For the past months, he’d been teetering along the edge of his man/wolf demarcation line. His brothers had been watching him with concern, worried he might give in to his wolf side and go feral again. When he’d met Sophie, that inner struggle had faded away, and he’d never felt more firmly grounded in the human world. But the events of the previous day had hit him like a sledgehammer, and his inner wolf had started its infernal pacing again.
Sophie is here. She’s okay, he told his wolf, calming it before it got too riled up. He didn’t want to go back to the wild. He wanted to stay in the human world with Sophie.
Slowly, gradually, his wolf calmed down, but it didn’t drop its state of alert. The beast was just as restless as Darcy when it came to that.
Chase glanced around, and sure enough, the Jack Russell was standing in the doorway, ears perked, teeth bared, ready to repel any intruder. And the category of intruder included Chase, judging by the resentment in the little dog’s eyes.
Hey, buddy, he tried. We both love the same woman. Give me a break already.
Darcy huffed, and a flurry of ugly images rushed through his mind, all from a hazy past.
Chase shook his head. That’s another man being bad to a different nice lady. It’s not me. Look — look how happy Sophie is.
Still, Darcy didn’t let up on that I’ve got my eye on you, buster look.
Chase sighed, wishing he could convince the dog. At the same time, he had no choice but to let out a little more of his wolf aura to put the dog in his place. He respected Darcy, all right. But there could only be one alpha in Sophie’s pack, and that was him.
Slowly, he lay back and let his eyes rove around the room. He’d never been to Sophie’s place before, and it was nice. Really nice, in a ramshackle, bohemian way. It was a tiny, three-room bungalow high above Lahaina — a worker’s cottage from the island’s plantation era.
“Look,” Sophie had said, pointing out the back window when she’d first showed him around the house. He’d come up nice and close behind her to see. “If you stand right here, you can see all the way up the ridgeline and to the mountain peaks.”
“Nice,” he’d murmured.
The lush green foliage and craggy mountains were nice, but really, he meant Sophie’s scent. Her proximity. The trust she placed in him.
She’d said something about the bungalow being her aunt’s, but it sure suited Sophie. The walls were lined with books, and the porch was packed with flowers. His color vision wasn’t great, but he was pretty sure they covered every hue in the rainbow. The scent of them tickled his nose even from a distance. Sophie’s clothes filled the closet and dresser too — he could tell from the style and the scent. Where the aunt was, he didn’t know. All he thought about was Sophie.
They’d whiled away hours at the blowhole the previous day, grabbed a lunch he couldn’t remember tasting on the way back, and spent most of the afternoon at police headquarters, enduring further questioning. By the time Sophie was released in the early evening — thank goodness for Officer Dawn Meli, who’d kept things moving — they’d both been worn out, and when they got to Sophie’s house…
Stay. Please stay, she’d begged.
She would have had to chase him away with a double-barrel shotgun. But damn, did her words make him feel great.
So, there he was, living out a scene right from his dreams. Well, a scene from one of his dreams. He had to admit to having some pretty X-rated fantasies over the past few weeks, and it was hard not to cross that line. For weeks, he’d been burning to touch her. To kiss her. To claim her as his own. And the reality was much harder to resist than the dream. She was so close, so beautiful…
But the instinct to protect superseded everything else, and he lay very, very still, keeping his senses piqued. There’d be no kissing, no letting his wolf get carried away. Now was not the time.
And anyway, a night spent sleeping beside Sophie was a thousand times more satisfying than some of the misguided flings he’d fallen into in the past, thinking that was what humans did. Like drinking coffee, reading the newspaper, or any of the other habits he’d tried and eventually dismissed. But now that he’d found his mate…
He took a deep breath. If it weren’t for the circumstances, he’d be in seventh heaven — apart from the fact that Coco had snuck into the bed and lay snoring by Sophie’s feet. That, and the fact that he was still reeling from the events of the previous day.
His heart clenched. What if Sophie had died?
He snuggled her a little closer. His arm was looped around the crook of her waist, and his hand lay in the neutral zone of her belly. Her back was flush against his chest, and he wished he could keep her there all day. But there was trouble afoot, which meant he couldn’t laze around. There was too much to do, too many unanswered questions to investigate. He had to check in with Dell about work, for one thing, and he also had to follow up with Officer Meli. So he inched away carefully, doing his best not to disturb Sophie, and swung his feet to the floor.
“Morning, Boris,” he whispered.
The greyhound gave a few meek taps of its tail.
Chase rolled his shoulders a few times and made a mental note of the book lying on her bedside table — One Hundred Years of Solitude. Then he stood, wishing he could wake up the way Boris did, with a long, deep stretch humans so aptly called downward dog — butt high, head low, with his spine stretched in a nice, long line.
Later, he promised his wolf.
As usual, he was trapped between two worlds. Among wolves, he was too human. Among humans, he was too canine. Which made him an involuntary rebel who didn’t fit into either world.
Around Sophie, though, none of that seemed
to matter. For the first time ever, he knew exactly where he belonged.
With her, his wolf agreed.
He took a long look around the bungalow, picturing himself living there. Or even better — picturing Sophie in his place.
She’d love it, his wolf said.
Yes, she would. Not so much for the house, which needed a lot of work, but the surroundings — Koakea Plantation. Ten secluded Maui acres he shared with a handful of shifters he trusted with his life. Hell, he could even trust them with someone as priceless as Sophie. His older brothers, Connor and Tim, had been there for him from the very start — well, the start of his life in the human world. Both had recently found their mates, and Chase figured Jenna and Hailey would welcome Sophie. Dell and his mate Anjali were already friendly with Sophie, and she seemed comfortable around them. Which left Cynthia, the young widow in charge of the plantation. The she-dragon was less outgoing than the others, but Chase was sure she would be okay with Sophie joining them too.
Chase sighed and padded to the bathroom, pausing to look back at her.
His inner wolf wagged its tail. Mate.
Even with all the worry on his shoulders, he felt heady and light. Every wolf shifter lived — dreamed — hoped — to find his mate, the one and only woman he was born to share his life with.
Sophie, his wolf hummed happily.
His lips curled into a smile. He’d thought Maui was just another place he’d pass through, not where he’d meet his mate. Funny, the games destiny played.
At times, he sensed that Sophie knew it too. The way her eyes dwelled on his said as much, as did her soft touch and the way she held his hand. They were meant for each other, and that was that. But as a human, she had no clue about shifters. How on earth was he going to break the truth to her?
She likes dogs, his wolf pointed out. She’ll like me.
Chase scratched an ear. That logic didn’t really hold up when it came to shifting. Sophie would freak out, for sure.
But he had more pressing problems to deal with. So he passed back through the bedroom, resisting the temptation to stop and watch Sophie for a while — say, the rest of his life. The dogs all stirred, asking to be let out, so he continued to the kitchen and opened the door. Boris and Darcy rushed out as quickly as the scent of kahili ginger rushed in, and he inhaled deeply. There were so many places in the world where a man might wake up with a feeling of dread. Overcrowded cities. War-torn valleys. Barren deserts. Maui had the opposite problem — it lulled you into a false sense of peace. He’d gone outside several times during the night to make sure there wasn’t anyone out there targeting Sophie. Everything had been quiet, but that had perplexed him too. What — or who — had set off the explosion? And if Sophie wasn’t the target, who was?
“Good morning,” Sophie murmured, making him turn.
He caught his breath, as always, when he looked at her. She’d let her hair down for the night, and it had taken everything he had not to stroke it. Hell, he could barely keep from touching her now.
Sophie. His wolf wagged its tail as she joined him at the door.
The morning light glinted off the heart-shaped locket she always wore, and her eyes sparkled with warmth. Her smile was like sunlight filtering through the trees — soft, bright, natural. A gift from God, if a guy believed in such things.
“Good morning,” he murmured.
It was a good morning, because he got to spend it with her.
They stood gazing at each other, and that was enough for him. But the explosion must have lit some fire in Sophie, because she straightened her shoulders in a what the heck gesture and stepped over to kiss him. Right on the lips, with her eyes open and everything.
His wolf rumbled inside. Maybe she’s not as timid as you think.
He swayed on his feet, caught between a desperate need for more and a paralyzing fear of going too far. Her lips were soft and careful, but hungry at the same time, and her chest bumped his. He kissed back with a tiny, sawing motion she seemed to like, and damn. It was all too easy to picture lifting Sophie onto the kitchen counter and letting her wrap her legs around him.
The kiss grew hotter and deeper, and for a few heated seconds, erotic images smoldered in his mind, so sharp and lifelike he wondered if they were coming from him or from her. But then Coco slipped between them, dashing outside, and thank goodness for that.
He stepped back and gulped for air. What a kiss.
Sophie looked at him through dazed eyes that agreed. Wow. What a kiss. Then a blush swept over her cheeks, and the old Sophie was back — the shier, more inhibited one.
She cleared her throat. “Would you like some coffee? Toast? I made some jam.”
She opened one of the cabinets that hung above the counter.
Chase’s eyebrows jumped up. “Whoa.”
Some was one of those words he’d had trouble with when he’d first joined the human world. It could mean three or four, or it could mean a dozen. In Sophie’s case, some meant shelf after shelf packed with jars. One hundred? Two hundred, maybe? Each had a red checkered top and a sticker that said Guava, Papaya, or Pineapple-Mango along with a date, all written in her neat script.
The red of her cheeks intensified, and she murmured, “Old habits are hard to break.”
He tilted his head. What exactly did that mean?
As Sophie moved around the kitchen preparing a quick breakfast, she elaborated. “My family, well… They liked to be self-sufficient.”
Chase could relate to that, but Sophie scowled like it wasn’t the best memory.
“The thing was, they took it to extremes. My stepfather was always worried about the next catastrophe. Nuclear war. Natural disasters. Communist takeovers…”
Chase did a double take. Communist takeovers?
Sophie sighed. “We always had to be prepared.” She opened another cabinet to show that it, too, was packed with supplies.
He shrugged, trying to put her at ease. “Nothing wrong with being prepared.”
She made a face. “By stockpiling five years of supplies?”
He gaped. Okay, that was a little much. “Wow. My family was happy to make it from one winter to the next.”
Oops. He probably shouldn’t have said that, judging by Sophie’s curious expression. His mind spun as he tried to figure out how to put wolf pack life in human terms.
“We lived way out in the mountains. We hunted.” His nostrils flared as the memories came back — memories of sprinting through the woods on four feet in hot pursuit of a deer. The thrill, the total concentration. “Went fishing.” He could feel the cold splash of river water on his belly and see his canine snout cutting a furrow through the surface. “That kind of thing.”
Sophie nodded as if that was completely normal, so, whew. But then she asked about his parents, and he hemmed and hawed. How to explain?
My mother was a wolf — pure wolf — in a pack that lived in the Bitterroot Range. My father was a hybrid shifter who could take any animal form. He ran with our pack for a few months. Just long enough to knock up my mom before he took off again.
Unlike most shifters, he’d been born a wolf in a one-pup litter and only started shifting into human form at a few months old — much to the shock of his wolf pack. Staying in canine form was crucial to his survival, but shifting had advantages like being able to release pack mates from traps with his human hands. That had earned him a high ranking in his wolf pack, but still, he’d never quite fit in. His human life had felt the same — except when he was with Sophie. She grounded him firmly in the human world and made him dream of finally finding a place called home.
“My mom liked the mountains. My dad took off when I was young,” he said, leaving it at that.
He refrained from calling his dad a total deadbeat and from discussing the hybrid shifter part. That would be especially hard to explain. Hybrids were very rare, and their offspring usually took a single animal form. That was why his brother Connor was a dragon and Tim, a bear.
&nbs
p; “You have a brother, right? Tim?” Sophie asked.
Chase nodded. “Half brother, but yeah. Like Connor.”
Those two had lived with their bear shifter mother, integrated into human society as well as any shifter could be. Chase had only come in out of the wild in his late teens, when his mother had died. Peacefully, thank goodness. There’d been that — and the fact that his human side had been calling to him for a while. Still, the transition had been hell, and not just because he missed his wolf family or had felt overwhelmed by the noise and bustle of the human world. The inconsistency of humans was just as bad. Humans said one thing but did another. They waged war to achieve peace. They admired Mother Nature but chopped away at her, one defenseless acre at a time.
Still, he’d persevered because he’d sensed destiny steering him onto a path he simply had to follow. Over the next decade, he’d despaired that destiny had forgotten him. But then he’d met Sophie, and that feeling of a guiding force was back and stronger than ever.
She is our destiny, his wolf assured him.
“What about Dell?” Sophie asked, jolting him back to the present.
Chase frowned. Dell was a lion shifter. But damn it. He couldn’t exactly announce that, could he?
“We met in the army. Same unit. So he’s like another brother, really.” One with a mane and a tail.
Chase ran a hand through his hair. How was he ever going to explain to Sophie that those men could shift into animal form at any time?
“Did you all come out here together?” Sophie asked.
He nodded. “A friend offered us security jobs. The good kind, in a nice, quiet place.”
That friend was Silas Llewellyn, dragon shifter and owner of Koa Point estate. The other guys had hopes of making the offer a long-term gig, but Chase had been secretly planning to return to his home pack as soon as he could. Ten years of military service had shown him enough of how cruel humans could be. Of course, he had witnessed humans at their finest as well — principled soldiers. Heroic mothers. Farmers determined to make a new start from the war-ravaged earth. Still, he’d had enough. Living in tune with the seasons as a wolf would be simpler and more satisfying.